Manipulating an image of a face with Flash and AS3 - actionscript-3

everyone. This isn't as much of an specific technical question as it is about asking for some guidance on which steps should I follow.
The thing is I haven't worked with Flash in general for over a year and I'm very rusty, but now, here at work, I need to create an app that takes a picture, detects the face in said picture and then applies a certain animation effect. For example a slap to the face, so the detected face would shake from side-to-side or maybe something similar to the Fatify app, where it takes the pic, makes the person look fat and then you can touch it anywhere to see it animate. You get the idea.
So, my main problem is, that even after doing some extensive research, I'm still not clear on what the best method is or which would be the best tools to accomplish the animation effects on the detected face. I have read about Joa Ebert's Image Processing Library, but that seems to have been forgotten for quite a while and seeing as I have been out of the loop from the world of Flash for quite a while, I don't know if there's any novelty that could be what I'm looking for. I have also looked at countless image manipulation blog posts and tutorials, but most of it is simple stuff that doesn't really apply to what I need.
So, in summary, I would really apreciate it if anyone could point me to resources or topics that I should look into, that might prove useful for what I need to accomplish.
Thanks.

You should be using OpenCV. The library is quite extensive and has been ported to operate in many languages. OpenCV has an api for facial tracking. We've used it in our studio before for simple face tracking games.
These links are kind of dated, but should put you on the right track.
http://www.francois-tarlier.com/blog/marilena-opencv-port-to-actionscript-3-as3-flash/
http://www.marcpelland.com/2009/03/16/face-detection-opencv-in-as3/

Related

Character animation with bones for AS3

I'm developing some platform-like game in Flash using AS3. Everything is quite clean. The whole code is class based etc.
I've already done the most of the mechanics, and now I need to do some main character animations. I've already designed it, and it's waiting to be animated as a vector graphics.
A the problem starts here... What is the proper way of doing that? I would like to use bone tools to make it smooth. But as far as I tried to find any materials about it on the Internet everybody just do some simple animations and play it separately one after another. How about playing legs animation simultaneously arms and other parts of the body? Maybe some tricky usage of state machine... I don't know.. Is there any ready solution for that?
More tips is better here, or even some tutorials - just anything.
This tutorial by Chris Georgenes seems to be exactly what your looking for: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/character_animation_ik.html. Chris teaches the reader while animating a simple character. Having a strong overall knowledge of the bone tool will allow you to get the nice crisp animations you seek. I sincerely wish you the best of luck with your project.

Beginner need some advice how to write code in AS3

I'm a beginner in programming world, never touch any programming language before. But last 3 days I decide to try make a flash game, I looked some tutorial about AS3, try it, yes I understand a little bit. But I'm still confused about this:
How do I know or to decide what codes I write first, what next? example: I want to add a hero, then a enemy, then a tiles, then a background, event listener.
Is it okay if I write code randomly, example: first I add enemy, then add tiles, add background, then add hero, etc?
What is the best way to completely learn all AS3 codes, especially about flash game dev?
I'm now in frustration mode, so I decide to learn from you all who have mastered AS3.
Check out this guide by Michael James Williams. I was in the same situation as you, and that guide helped me a lot. It goes through a lot of the basics and does a good job of explaining each step.
To answer some of your questions, the order in which you code stuff doesn't matter too much. You can always go back and adjust your old code, and you'll definitely end up doing that at some point.
For learning AS3 syntax, just look through some examples and tutorials, and don't be afraid to read the official AS3 docs. They might be intimidating at first, but once you start learning some of the terminology, they're very helpful.
you can try some video tutorials like these
http://www.lynda.com/ActionScript-tutorials/AS3-language-fundamentals/123492/129625-4.html
http://www.lynda.com/Flash-tutorials/Building-Flash-Games-Starling/98951-2.html?srchtrk=index:1%0Alinktypeid:2%0Aq:flash%2Bgames%0Apage:1%0As:relevance%0Asa:true%0Aproducttypeid:2
If you're frustrated NOW, are you sure that you're ready to invest a couple of YEARS in becoming half-good with Actionscript? You'll have to like learning from your mistakes (an excellent way to learn, actually), because you will make thousands of them and they will cost you thousands of hours!
Do NOT write 'randomly' unless you want to greatly lengthen your time to mastery. Everything you do should have a purpose. I would start (if I were starting again) by giving myself a series of the smallest challenges: make an object appear; make it disappear; make it appear in one second from now; make it appear when I tap a key or click my mouse; make it move across the screen; make it move back; make it follow my mouse... etc.
There are many hundreds of basic programmatic elements like these that will add to your growing grasp of logic, data-structures and language. There are usually many ways to accomplish the same task -- learn and practice all of them.
Luckily, the Internet is full of good tutorials and references to Actionscript, and some decent forums like this one where you can get help.
I know this is king of old but someone might still find this useful.
I think that if you are serious about game development and also want to learn some techniques that are independent of the platform (Flash/AS3 in this case) you should use a framework.
For Flash the best game framework is the Starling along with Feather for UI.
They run on Stage3D which means that run on the GPU not the CPU which make them very fast.
With Starling you can also create mobile games that run in AIR so I think it really is something to consider.
On hsharma.com you can find a free video tutorial that goes through everything you need to know to get starting with game development so it should answer the question on how to create enemies, backgrounds, etc.
Hope this helps someone.

Non-scaling thumb skin Flash UIScrollBar AS3 alternatives

There's probably a million posts about scrolling in AS3, but the problem I'm having is quite different. I have no problem making scrollbars work (have done loads of times), but I'm having a problem with custom skins. I'm basically trying to make the bar in this concept:
concept http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/5081/screenshot20130507at140.png
The key part is the thumb. When customising the skins in Flash, it scales the thumb bar (which hasn't been a problem in my previous projects, but in this one I want to have a non-scaled graphic like the one in the concept.
I've done a few searches and apparently this isn't easily achieved (something about extending the component class that I didn't really understand), but I find the UIScrollBar very easy to use. So my questions are:
Is there anyway to get UIScrollBar to do what I want?
Failing that, is there a third party equivlent of UIScrollBar that'll do what I want?
Failing those, what is the most pain-free way of making a custom scrollbar in AS3? (I realise there's a lot of tutorials for this out there, but there's too many, so if someone could point me towards a tutorial that doesn't require cause pain I'd appreciate it)
Thanks! (:

Any ideas on how to create a flying tile 3D transition just via script/classes?

Right guys,
I have been looking all over the internet for a tutorial to which will show me how to re-create this effect on images...
http://flash-effects.com/tutorial-image-transition-flying-tile-3d/
I dont want to install these 3rd party components, because the project I am working on at present, may in future need to be edited by other designers/developers.
Is there anyway to do this just via scripting???
Any feedback would be appreciated, im ideally looking for a tutorial...
Most of what you're looking for is here. Then download the Bitmap.zip example and look through it. Although I will reiterate what the page says, you really should buy the book. It's quite good and teaches a lot about Flash in general, not just game programming.
You'd still have to figure out how to randomize the height and width of the pieces, add an onClickListener, and then move the pieces. From the example you provided it looks like they're just moving them back and forth in a z-dimension.
Hope this helps.

Advanced chroma key code samples

I'm working on an application that needs to key out the background from an image taken by a webcam in front of a green screen. I figured this would be a very common task, but to my surprise i'm having trouble finding code samples for anything more advanced than a simple color-threshold and those do not quite cut it quality wise.
I've found a few pdf-papers, but I'm having trouble translating these rather high concepts into actual implementations, I'd much rather look at some code.
Focus here is on quality, having a second or more of processing time is not a problem.
I will be using actionscript 3 (and possibly pixel bender) to implement this, but I'll happily look at other languages aswell.
If you have any good samples doing this, the whole process or parts, please do post them!
If you have no high requirement for chromakey quality, maybe this(http://www.quasimondo.com/archives/000615.php) will be okay.
But for high quality video( i.e, 720*576 video ), it is not easy job.
I have spent a lot time to research high quality chromakey algorithm, finally I have figured out one algorithm(implemented with c/c++) for real time video,which can be used in none-linear video editing system as plugin or standalone application.
I put some demo static images to show at voicethread.com websites, everyone can comment with text, or voice there.
http://voicethread.com/share/801789/